Whether from incompatible processors or older Linux versions, these devices won't get Linux app support

Since adding Linux app support for some Chromebooks in Chrome OS 69, Chrome developers slowly added support to more devices. However, they’ve also built a lengthy list of Chromebooks that will never see Linux app support.

Chrome devs released a new batch of devices that will not see Linux app support this week, including the 2013 Chromebook Pixel.

Several reasons exist that prevent Linux app support, some of which extend from how Google implemented support. Linux apps run in a container, which is a fancy way of saying they’re isolated from other parts of the OS for security.

Since Chrome OS runs on the Linux kernel, it can use the Linux kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) to replicate a Linux system within the container to run apps.

What’s preventing Linux app support

One of the biggest reasons devices won’t see support, according to official Google documentation, is that running a virtual machine on 32-bit ARM CPUs is “difficult, non-standard and requires coordination with the firmware.”

This reason alone banishes over a dozen Chromebooks to the “not supported” list.

Another reason on the processor front is that some Intel processors don’t have virtualization support for Linux apps. Mainly, the Bay Trail family of processors, which are mostly Atom processors, lack virtualization support. However, Linux apps likely wouldn’t run well on Atom processors anyway.

By far the largest disqualifier is the Linux kernel version a Chromebook runs on. Linux app support relies on changes to the KVM found in Linux 3.14 and newer, meaning some Chromebooks using older Linux kernels don’t have the KVM updates required to run Linux apps.

While the team could potentially port the necessary KVM changes to older Linux versions, Chrome developers recently noted that several devices would reach ‘End of Life’ before they could complete the port. Further, the team plans to focus on bringing Linux app support to newer Chromebooks first.

With all that said, below is the comprehensive list of Chromebooks that will not get Linux app support. Google posted a similar record but used the codenames of each device. The folks at 9to5 Google translated the list to actual device names.

Finally, if a device isn’t on the list below, it will likely get Linux app support, but it’s not clear when.